America’s Weapons of Mass Destruction

by John Thompson

02/03/03

As the U.S. goes after Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and commits financial and political resources to deal with North Korea, various critics have reminded the world that the U.S. has considerable holdings of such weapons themselves.

I’ve heard earnest young Peace demonstrators assure each other that the US provided Iraq with the means to make nuclear arms in the first place. The NDP MP Libby Davis-- formerly a stalwart of the Communist Party of Canada--is heading to the US as a self-proclaimed "weapons inspector". Needless to say, there are fundamentalist sympathizers who think that because the U.S. has nuclear arms, then Iraq and, presumably, al Qaeda should have them too.

Yes, the United States did produce the world’s first nuclear weapons and used two of them. If one was such a moral neophyte as to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as isolated episodes it becomes easy to criticize the U.S. Considering the battle for Okinawa, in which over 100,000 people died, was a foretaste of a conventional invasion of Japan, Harry Truman cannot be blamed for his decision. Personally, my own father was training for the Canadian contribution to that invasion, so I owe my existence to those bombings--as do millions of other people.

It is also true, that during the Cold War, the U.S. amassed huge stockpiles of nuclear arms, chemical agents and biological weaponry. Their stocks, meant to deter the USSR from continuing its aggressive ways, were huge and meant for defensive purposes. The Cold War is gone, and so is this stockpile.

As recently as 15 years ago, the U.S. had 1,957 strategic nuclear missiles and bombers, which were capable of delivering some 13,873 nuclear warheads (the Soviets had 2,511 missiles and bombers and 11,004 warheads). There were thousands more warheads deployed on intermediate range weapons like the Soviet SS-20 and as tactical nuclear warheads.

The Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War ended, and massive reductions occurred in the nuclear inventories of both Russia and the U.S. These were conducted openly, and both countries were free to inspect each other’s weaponry on demand. All of the intermediate weapons are gone, as are all the tactical nuclear missiles. Currently the U.S. has around 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads, while the Russians are busy stripping down to the same level. In short, over 90% of all the nuclear warheads that both countries had are dismantled and most of the uranium therein has been converted into electrical power.

The inspections are working out just fine. I’ve been on a Trident Submarine base on a day when the Russians showed up to take inventory. They had picked one submarine for inspection, and it was sitting by the dock with its hatches open and workmen were standing by to remove the shrouds of any missile that the Russians wanted to look into.

The Americans (with much British and Canadian help) also made massive quantities of chemical and biological weaponry in the 1950s. It’s all gone now too. The U.S. unilaterally rid itself of biological weaponry in the mid-1970s and invited the world to follow their example. Eventually, a treaty was worked out with some verification measures built into it. The U.S., however, has no real secrets and the only bio-weapons research it currently conducts is defensively oriented (the same is true of Britain and Canada), in that we need to see what threats are possible so that protective measures can be designed to counter them. Offensive research in learning how to stabilize viruses for aerosol delivery, and work on delivery systems is not being undertaken at all.

The American chemical stockpile is largely gone--as is the Russian one. The main hiccup has been that disarming chemical weapons is costly and dangerous work; usually involving carefully breaching the weapon and diluting the agent with superheated steam, or burning it off at extremely high temperatures. Both countries are observing each other’s progress and are content with the work done so far.

When visiting the Rock Island Arsenal in 1997, I saw a huge stack of empty mustard gas containers waiting to be smelted down into parts for John Deere Lawnmowers. Not quite beating swords to ploughshares, but close enough.

Washington (unlike Ottawa) is also usually prepared to put money where its mouth is; and the U.S. has sunk tens of billions of dollars into treaties, trade-deals, inspections and equipment to limit the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to convince nations to take another course. This is a much larger contribution to Peace than a thousand Libby Davies’ could ever manage.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca